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We may be told that nothing prevents an identity being thus
multiple. But there must be a unity underlying the aggregate: a
manifold is impossible without a unity for its source or ground,
or at least, failing some unity, related or unrelated. This unity
must be numbered as first before all and can be apprehended only
as solitary and self-existent.
When we recognize it, resident among the mass of things, our
business is to see it for what it is- present to the items but
essentially distinguished from them- and, while not denying it
there, to seek this underly of all no longer as it appears in
those other things but as it stands in its pure identity by
itself. The identity resident in the rest of things is no doubt
close to authentic identity but cannot be it; and, if the
identity of unity is to be displayed beyond itself, it must also
exist within itself alone.
It may be suggested that its existence takes substantial form
only by its being resident among outside things: but, at this, it
is itself no longer simplex nor could any coherence of manifolds
occur. On the one hand things could take substantial existence
only if they were in their own virtue simplex. On the other hand,
failing a simplex, the aggregate of multiples is itself
impossible: for the simplex individual thing could not exist if
there were no simplex unity independent of the individual, [a
principle of identity] and, not existing, much less could it
enter into composition with any other such: it becomes impossible
then for the compound universe, the aggregate of all, to exist;
it would be the coming together of things that are not, things
not merely lacking an identity of their own but utterly
non-existent.
Once there is any manifold, there must be a precedent unity:
since any intellection implies multiplicity in the intellective
subject, the non-multiple must be without intellection; that
non-multiple will be the First: intellection and the
Intellectual-Principle must be characteristic of beings coming
later.
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